erritories was affirmed by
Northern and denied by Southern Democrats. Northern and Southern
Democrats, acting together in the Cincinnati National Convention, had
ingeniously avoided any solution of this difference.

A twofold interpretation had enabled that party to elect Mr. Buchanan,
not by its own popular strength, but by the division of its opponents.
Notwithstanding its momentary success, unless it could develop new
sources of strength the party had only a precarious hold upon power.
Its majority in the Senate was waning. In Kansas free-State emigration
was outstripping the South in numbers and checkmating her in border
strife. According to the existing relative growth in sectional
representation and sectional sentiment, the balance of power was
slowly but steadily passing to the North.

Out of this doubt and difficulty there was one pathway that seemed
easy and certain. All the individual utterances from the Democratic
party agreed that the meaning of the words "subject to the
Constitution" was a question for the courts. This was the original
compact between Northern and Southern Democrats in caucus when Douglas
consented to repeal. Douglas, shorn of his prestige by his defeat for
the Presidential nomination, must accept conditions from his
successful rival. The Dred Scott case afforded the occasion for a
decision. Of the nine judges on the Supreme Bench seven were
Democrats, and of these five were appointed from slave-States. A
better opportunity for the South to obtain a favorable dictum could
never be expected to arise. A declaration by the Supreme Court of the
United States that under the Constitution Congress possessed no power
to prohibit slavery in the Federal Territories would by a single
breath end the old and begin a new political era. Congress was in
session and the political leaders were assembled at Washington.
Political topics excluded all other conversation or thought. Politics
reddened the plains of Kansas; politics had recently desecrated the
Senate chamber with a murderous personal assault; politics contended
greedily for the spoils of a new administration: politics nursed a
tacit conspiracy to nationalize slavery. The slavery sentiment ruled
society, ruled the Senate, ruled the Executive Mansion. It is not
surprising that this universal influence flowed in at the open door of
the national hall of justice--that it filtered through the very walls
which surrounded the consulting-room of the Supre